Becker: The Complete Series - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

Becker: The Complete Series

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

​

Movie
I find it rather amusing that most of the MAJOR Cheers stars went on to other successful TV shows. Kelsey Grammar went on to star in the MASSIVELY popular show Frasier (which is personally my favorite TV show of all times), Woody Harrelson became a film star, and Ted Danson has had great success with shows like Damages and Becker. While I LOOOOOOOOVE Damages for being a dark drama, Becker is up there with one of my favorite sitcoms due to the fact that I relate to Dr. Becker himself. Danson plays a narcissistic, sour puss, yelling at the world jerk with a heart of gold. The first time I watched the show back when I was just graduating college I looked at him and said to myself “Oh my goodness, it’s an older version of me!”. Which explains why I got so hooked on the show and watched it religiously after graduating.

Long story short, Dr. John Becker (Ted Danson) is a brilliant research doctor who opened up a dinky private practice in the heart of the Bronx. The only problem is that he’s not exactly what you would call “tactful”. Sour, dour, disgusted at everything and everyone in life, he lays down the law on his patients, staff, and “friends” at every turn and is one of those characters that you would just NOT want to be around in real life. His only flaw, well, he’s actually a caring guy underneath. Even though he’s disgusted with the world and would love to hit the nuclear bomb reset switch on the world, his inner doctor truly does want to take care of people (even if taking caring of them includes whacking them upside the head with a 2x4 to knock some sense in them).

His office staff are mixed lot, with office nurse Hattie Winston taking up the slack from his severely “lacking” people skills and trying to hold down a successful business, even when Becker’s loose brained nurse’s aide Linda (Shawnee Smith) can’t seem to plug the leak from whence her brains are leaking. His only sense of relief from the day is going down the street to the local diner where he can snarl about the work week with Jake (Alex Desert), and diner owner Reggie (the gorgeous Terry Farrell after leaving Deep Space Nine).

Becker ran from 1998-2004 and had a FANTASTIC run for the most part. The very first episode pretty much hits the ground running and the show doesn’t even start to slow down until the 4th season. Terry Farrell and Ted Danson are perfect as foils, with Ted being the blustery (but brilliant) cynic, while Terry doesn’t take any guff from him. A factor that plays heavily into their begrudging friendship and later ALMOST romance. Shawnee Smith was fantastic as the moronic Linda, and the small cast had a great sense of comradery that stuck with them till the final couple seasons. Right about the end of season 4 there’s a cliffhanger with Reggie leaving the diner. We all expected her to come back and have her “issue” resolved at the beginning of season 5 (like most sit coms do), but no. Reggie was GOOOOOOOONE permanently. Shocked fans were surprised, but Nancy Travis comes in to take over the Diner as Chris and the show continued. Supposedly an interview with one of the creators said that they were originally going to continue with Terry, but they wanted to mix things up and shock the audience a bit, so they decided to just write her out of the show. A decision that came back to bite them almost immediately. Chris was a solid character and Nancy Travers played her well, but longtime fans felt betrayed by the change and treated Chris as an interloper, causing the ratings to slide and the 6th and final season to hit a sort of hiccup.

That brings us to the final season. Season 5 with Nancy taking over Terry was a bit of an adjustment, but season 6 is known as the season that killed a FANTASTIC show. The writers softened Dr. Becker’s caustic nature (which was his greatest appeal to the audience) and turned everything into a “happy ending” for the cast. Something that felt very out of place for the character arcs and tropes of the show. Looking back and chewing through the series once again I still think that seasons 1-4 are just about PERFECT comedy, and season 5 is very good. However, season 6 is only there in the collection to complete the show as very fans even consider it very worthwhile with the stunts the creator’s pulled. Is it a worthy boxset? Of course. 4 seasons of amazing chemistry, and a solid 5th one is more than enough fun to overlook the faux pas of the final 13 episodes.




Rating:

Rated TV-PG




Video:

Even though it was shot at the “older” style of 1.37:1 framing and with a stereo track, Becker looks well done for a low budget sit com. The show was never a high-powered show filled with CGI, but rather small set pieces and the show reused those set pieces like CRAZY. The discs have some mild compression artifacts and look a bit soft, but the clarity is still quite pleasing and the shows orange color tones come through well. Facial detail is well replicated and except for a few times where I felt like they were filtering Ted Danson’s face a bit, I can’t complain at all. Black levels are solid, showing off good shadow detail and very little crush (one or two scenes that I could detect). There’s nothing wildly SPECIAL about the DVDs for Becker, but they have been mastered in the last decade and look clean and clear of age based abnormalities as a result.







Audio:

Becker’s 2.0 Dolby Digital stereo track isn’t fancy, but it fits the sitcom genre well and does everything asked of it without complaining. The show is decidedly very mild in mixing, and focuses 99% of the time on dialog and the laugh track, with only the occasional honking horn in New York City traffic, or the mumbling of patient’s in the background of his little practice for ambient noise. Voices are crisp and well defined, and there’s no imbalance with the rest of the track. LFE is not exactly prevalent, but like most sitcoms, it’s not exactly something that was intended to be filled with deep bass. It’s an overall very well done 2 channel experience, and is about what I remember from watching this on CBS live back in the day.
.






Extras:

• Sizzle Reel
• Cast Interviews
• Audience Warm Up Reel
• Gag Reel

Final Score: ​

Becker was a fresh sitcom around the turn of the century and was one of the better ones in my opinion. Ted Danson perfect for being the blunt, jerkish, but strangely likeable Dr. Becker and his comradery with Terry Farrell was absolutely fantastic. The last two seasons were a bit rocky after Farrell left the show and Nancy Travis took over as the female “combatant” to Becker’s narcissistic tendencies, but it was by and large a VERY successful show (and one that I loved for years). Strangely enough, this is one of the few boxsets that Paramount has put out recently where a special edition or complete series was NOT put out in the past. We had the original 6 season boxsets doled out about 4 years ago or so, but this is the first time in its life that Becker got a complete series boxset. There’s no extra disc of special features, and the original DVDs were REALLY barebones to begin with, but everything is here, just in the slim packaging of the “mega” cases that Paramount has been using lately. If you HAVE the series already, no reason to upgrade as they are the same discs, but if you haven’t had the opportunity yet then this is easily the most cost-effective way to grab all six seasons (about $40 for 6 seasons as of this review). Definitely recommended for a good watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Ted Danson, Hattie Winston, Terry Farrell
Created by: Dave Hackel
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 MPEG 2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Studio: Paramount/CBS
Rated: TV-PG
Runtime: 2769 Minutes
DVD Release Date: June 6th, 2017

Image

• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Fun Watch​